Prepare your Macs for Hurricane Matthew

Best Practices

Since we’ve been busy advising clients today, we figured we would share our best practices for businesses to protect your electronics during a storm like Hurricane Matthew:

Check your backups, and if you use external drives or media store it in a safe, dry place.

If you haven’t started using offsite, cloud backups you can start for free using our recommended solution.

Move all power strips and battery backups up from the floor in case of water rise.

Shutdown all devices you won’t be expecting to access remotely. Those devices should be attached to a battery backup with auto-shutdown configured. We’ve shutdown/unplugged all our devices and highly suggest you do exactly the same.

Unplug all devices from AC power before the storm starts. Power down and unplug the battery backups if equipped.

If possible move critical equipment to a safe location and waterproof it.

Safety First!

Never risk yourself or others to save a device, don’t use any devices in or near water, and remember with standing water in a house or office may mean risk of electronic shock. Remember to be safe out there and use common sense!

Consider Battery Power

If you haven’t invested in a battery backup of some kind, hindsight is 20/20 at this point, you should strongly consider it. During storms having a battery to power devices a little longer could be used to stay in communication with loved ones, stay current on the storm situation, and contact emergencies services could give you a critical option. Plus during normal conditions these battery backups can help condition your power to avoid drops in power that can damage electronics.